


Unexpected Patronum

by Troutwaxer



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Robert A. Heinlein - Fandom
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 23:54:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15874293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Troutwaxer/pseuds/Troutwaxer
Summary: A blond British author who calls herself "Jo" walks into a mystical tavern and gets into a magical duel with H.P. Lovecraft, who is showing off his uglier side, while Robert Heinlein and other authors observe.





	Unexpected Patronum

Had you driven past the big roadhouse on Highway 50, southwest of Emporia, Kansas, you would not have noticed the place. The authors inside, the creators and sustainers of reality, have carefully edited the sight from mere readers.

The roadhouse was one of those special bars, and by “special” I mean the outfit was a magical tavern involving at least one gate between the worlds. You’ve doubtless heard of these: The White Horse Tavern in New York, Chatsubo in Tokyo or the Muthiaga Club in Nairobi. There are other bars that readers of this world don’t know about: Roadhouse Octavia in New Pasadena, The Fritz Libre Bar and Grill in Old Lankhmar, or Ramsey’s Revelation on Severnford Road in Brichester. And let’s not forget my protégé’s Old Victorian Place on Mars near Mons Olympus, which my wife and I call home.

Having said all this, I need to give you the facts about one depressing bit of reality. Callahan’s doesn’t exist and I’m as disappointed as everyone else.

Another fact about magical taverns is that they’re all connected together once you get inside. An author who is so inclined can enter our realm via a hidden door in the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel, meet a friend at The White Hart, then exit via De Marigny Bleu in Ulthar and walk along "the onyx-inlaid Esplanade that wanders above" – Lord that man could be wordy - "the obsidian cliffs north of the warehouse district where the loathsome Gak-birds nest." The effect is of one gigantic bar with hundreds of rooms, a thousand bartenders, a million kinds of liquor, and exits to every reality that ever hosted a tavern. Just make sure you pay up before leaving the particular business you’re in and you’ll stay out of trouble... and you shouldn’t duel unless your peers have accounted you a master of the craft.

It was the week after Worldcon and normally I would have spent my time with Ike, Arthur and Ted, all of us holding forth on the winners and losers of the last year in publishing, but I wanted a break so my wife and I looked up Samuel, a long-time friend, who took us along on his quest to renew auld acquaintance with James Allen White, a once-well-known author and publisher from Emporia… I suppose there’s no need to soft-peddle this - truth be told, we were avoiding our housemate, Howard, who’d done nothing but complain since N.K. Jemisin won her third Hugo in a row. So we crossed from Dino’s to Heinolds’ First and Last Chance to The Boar’s Head, where Bill himself tipped us a wink, then crossed into the All-Emporia Kansas Roadhouse, an edifice built on the faded and forgotten reputation of Mr. White.

We’d just gotten our drinks and settled in at a booth when Howard stumbled through the door, arm in arm with Edgar. Howard was most of the way to being stupendously drunk, while Edgar was high on something, probably Laudanum. Fortunately they didn’t notice us and settled in two of the three remaining bar stools. That was when _she_ walked in.

This requires an explanation. Everyone I’ve mentioned so far is dead, but I’m an old man and so are my friends. That established, it’s completely within the rules for living authors to join us here, and they drop in with some regularity. _She_ \- I’ll drop the italics – was one of those tall, leggy, very blond British women. She was in her late forties and had a fantastic face with a long, straight nose and very mobile and expressive lips. “Is that-” asked my wife, then stopped talking, because the beautiful British woman had sat down on the stool next to Edgar.

“I’m Jo,” she said. “I recognize your friend, the chin is unique in all of literature, but I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“You should know,” said Edgar, swaying slightly, “I didn’t die of rabies. Some ridiculous heart-surgeon lied about that in an academic journal.” He stared mindlessly at the British woman. His pupils were tiny.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked.

“I said,” repeated Edgar, twitching, “that I didn’t die of rabies. That was some half-mad cardiologist diagnosed me from newspaper reports of my death.”

“Well then,” asked Jo, her voice brittle and a little too bright, “what did you die of.”

“I could never handle alcohol, but they gave me a drink each time I voted, and they took me to all the polling places.” Edgar stopped talking and spent a few seconds scratching himself. “I was already sick, and the doctor had forbidden me to travel.”

Howard turned his saturnine head to look at the woman. “I beg your pardon Ma’am,” he said slowly. His Boston accent was carefully enunciated and his tone a little hostile, “but we’re not looking for company tonight.”

I looked at my wife. It was clear that whatever was coming next would not be pleasant. “Maybe I should break this up?”

Strong female fingers pressed down hard on my forearm. “I think the young lady can take care of herself,” she told me. “Besides, we’re having a wonderful time with Sam and I don’t want you duelling tonight.”

I shrugged. Whatever happened wouldn’t be reflected in the world you know, though it might have grave consequences among those of us who shape reality. Everyone knew that Howard was a vicious duellist, unbeaten for decades, but I’d never seen “Jo” in any of our places before tonight. Hopefully someone had warned her.

“Their dispute might be entertaining,” said Sam, “and I seem to recall that the characters you wrote all knew better than to mess in someone else’s business.” Having been chastened by both my spouse and my friend – and I must admit it, they were both quite correct - I settled back to watch the show.

It was obvious from her manner that Jo had decided Howard and Edgar were out of their heads, belligerent, and best left alone. I heard the last syllables of her apology float across the room as she took her drink from the barkeep and turned her back on the two men. “Wisely done,” Sam said, and I nodded my agreement.

Unfortunately, Edgar hadn’t finished expressing himself, and he unloaded at Jo’s back. “We’re mourning the death of literature tonight.”

Jo turned her head over one perfectly formed shoulder. “I thought you didn’t want company,” she said, and turned her back again, then drank her glass down to the halfway point, coughing a couple times at the sensation of too much alcohol drunk too quickly. It was obvious that she planned to finish her drink and go elsewhere. Howard, on the other hand, was no longer able to control his tongue. “To the mongrel whore,” he said, and poured out the remains of his drink on the floor. “May she win a fourth Hugo. And a fifth. Even a sixth. What’s wrong with the world that a half-breed, slime-lubricated spawn of Shub Niggurath is even allowed to publish a book, much less that she wins a prize!”

“The worms will come for her eventually, Howard,” said Edgar consolingly as he patted Lovecraft on the back. By then Jo had drunken her glass to the dregs and removed a five-pound note from her purse, but upon hearing Howard’s ugly speech she turned back towards him and glared down her nose in the best British fashion. Then she set her glass carefully down on the bar, folded up the five-pound note and put it back in her coin purse, which she closed with a little click. The sound was tiny, but everyone in the room heard it.

“Sir,” she said calmly, “I have great respect for you as a writer, but I’ve met Nora, and she is both a fine author and a very kind, sweet, and goodhearted lady. I will not hear you speak of her in such a fashion, so I would request that you retract your most recent words and apologize to the room.”

Howard looked at her carefully. “Madame,” he said, “what if I don’t? Will you sue me? You might critique my feelings towards women and the unclean races, but you are the very tower of selfishness. Your creation could support a thousand otherwise starving writers; pay their bills, purchase their food and put shoes on the feet of their children, yet you happily sic your vile attorneys on those who play in the garden you have created. My meager creations might drip forth, oh so very slowly, from the “diseased brain of a woman-hating racist,” as one of my critics recently put it, but Clark, Frank, Zelia, August, Robert, Ramsey, Brian, Elizabeth, Charles, Ruthanna and countless others make their living from my poor Mythos. A few even support themselves by reacting against me, but that is a writer’s lot and I don’t begrudge them their daily coin. As the modern world might say, I have “Open Sourced” the Mythos, and my literary heirs have never once sued anyone, not even the vile Slavs, Asiatics and Catholics who earn their living by befouling my creations!”

“I have no intention of suing you,” said Jo, “But I will be happy to discuss your history as a revolting negative poster child for Intersectionality with a hundred-million schoolchildren. No matter your contributions to Science Fiction, your reputation would not survive. You already have enough trouble as things stand, now that they’ve taken your face off the World Fantasy Award… would you like the Cthulhu Mythos to sink like a stone?”

“Madam,” said Howard, “I can’t let you do that.” He reached into the inner pocket of his dark, double-breasted suit and brought forth a book. Edgar’s eyes bulged at the sight and he immediately vomited, spraying the smelly contents of his stomach across the bar. Ernest, teeth clenched, got up from his table, slugged Edgar and dragged him off somewhere. Baroness Blixen twitched uncontrollably and finally Ray took off his shirt, put it over her head, and led her to another room. Even Sam averted his eyes and raised a napkin to his lips, while I closed my own eyes in disgust. My wife hid beneath the table. She’s not an author and is only allowed here by special arrangement, so Howard’s book might have effects on her which go beyond a simple case of nausea. The cover of Howard’s book is made from the skin of some eldritch, benthic creature which despite being dead, moves in suggestive and demented patterns over the surface of the book’s cover, even as the Arabic letters of the title, which are themselves gates, whirl and dance against the squamous leather. Each letter exposes a universe where, as best I can tell, diseased thought, agony, and pure nausea take the places of space, time, and gravity.

As Howard opened the book, Jo clenched her teeth and reached into her purse, pulling out a wand and a funny clock built inside a tiny glass ball. That was when the bouncer showed up. “You’ll have to take that outside.”

“Of course,” said Jo. Howard turned pale.

There’s only one bouncer in the whole complex, and he’s new. The day he came here permanently every other bouncer in the place resigned in his favor. You’d expect a physically imposing person, but the new bouncer is a little Jewish guy, only a hair over five-feet tall, and nobody sane enough to actually complete a book will argue with him. Heavyweights like Joyce and Burroughs speak to him with the greatest respect, and even I, with all the power I could summon, wouldn’t want to duel with the man… as I said, Lovecraft turned pale at the thought. “Would you be so kind as to sober me up?” asked Howard.

The bouncer spat at Howard’s feet. “You’re a scumbag, Hitler-felching, fascist with a bad case of brain worms and the prose-style of a retarded chimpanzee with tertiary syphilis. You’ve just picked on a lady and you can go screw the corpse of your wife, whom you never satisfied once in your limp-dicked, clap-infected pustule of a life!”

“Very well.” Howard squared his shoulders and sniffed. When duelling, authors wield their creations against one another, but the physical powers an author has granted their creations don’t mean much compared to the aggression, skill and, let’s be frank, pure venom with which they are wielded. A science fiction writer is very capable of summoning a fleet of planet-destroying spaceships against an opponent, but the writers who specialize in emotional and psychological issues have their own set of weapons, more dangerous in some ways than a death-ray or planet-buster… meanwhile, the bouncer had not once duelled and only a fool would call him out.

Jo regarded the bouncer calmly. “Will you make us an arena?” she asked. I loved her accent. There’s something about a good-looking woman with a British accent that I find thoroughly delightful.

The bouncer pointed at the wall and a gate opened. Jo and Howard both disappeared. “Behold,” intoned the bouncer, clearly proud of his creation. “Behold the Plains of Agony.” The gate glassed over with some kind of force-field and spread along the wall so all of us could watch without being hurt. The world outside the gate was one huge stone carving, a bas-relief turned sideways, in which an infinite number of exquisitely sculpted Howards and Jos raped and tortured each other in unspeakable fashions, stone viscera erupting across their carven genitals. Razor sharp obsidian crystals and rusty iron spikes pierced their bodies while their stone mouths shrieked in agony. Thorny, dried up shrubs sprouted from the cracks in the statues, their flowers brown and brittle.

I helped my wife up from under the table and she examined the battle ground. “Oh my,” she gasped. “He’s really outdone himself this time.”

Outside, Howard was paging through his book while Jo took off her heels. A proper duel starts slowly, each fighter bringing out his or her least-powerful creations. The purpose of a duel is not merely to win, but to test each other, slowly building up to a crescendo of destructive energy, and seeing where on the ascending scale of whatever violence you can inflict your opponent crumbles.

Howard started with his ghouls. They’re relatively powerless in the grand scheme of Lovecraft’s fiction, but there are nonetheless a terrifying opponent because Howard’s particular emotional problems mean that everything is ultimately sexual for him, and ghouls, sized properly to both rape and devour, can be a terrifying opponent for women with certain issues.

Jo scarcely blinked, and countered the ghouls with giant spiders. Howard called the byakhee and Jo summoned a dragon who dispersed the byakhee easily, but she lost points on that one, because she had less-powerful creations available to counter the threat. Howard, following the lead of one of his disciples, brought a Cthonian to the surface and the tentacled horror fought the dragon to a standstill. Migo killed centaurs, night gaunts were tormented to destruction by tiny blue fairies, and Elder Things fell to the savage attack of a flock of griffons.

Howard frowned, his manner suggesting the conclusion that Jo could counter any physical threat, and a meteor blazed across the sky, falling at Jo’s feet, staining the land with colours no human eye could perceive. Jo replied with some kind of wraith which took the form of a young lady, perhaps an undead Jewish shop-owner circa 1925. A tear rolled down Howard’s face, then a couple more tears, then he started to weep, but soon he was sobbing brokenly. Jo’s eyes went dead, then her skin sagged as if she was rotting from someplace deep inside, and finally her whole body turned an ugly shade of gray. Both combatants gathered their internal fires and fought back, eyes closed, against the two demonic powers. The struggle went on for several minutes, then they gasped simultaneously as color returned to their cheeks, the wraith and the Colour slowly fading away.

Howard brought out a dhole and Jo summoned giants to crawl into its mouth and kill it from within. Non-Euclidean spores fell from the sky, and they were gobbled up by living garden gnomes. Combat stopped for a moment as the fighters evaluated each other. This was where, in previous duels, Lovecraft had brought Cthulhu forth to flay the mind of his opponent, but this time he invoked Yog Sothoth instead. The disassociated globes and tentacles reached for Jo, but her fingers flew to the little glassed-in clock and suddenly there was a beautiful younger woman standing in front of her, then two young women, then four, then eight-sixteen-thirty-two-sixty-four-thousand-million-billion of her, all them fighting the millions of Yog Sothoths who were also multiplying themselves by manipulating time. The battle took hours, days, weeks, years, centuries and it was over two seconds after it started, the Plain of Agony waist-deep in dead girls, severed tentacles and deflated globes, all floating in a sea of blood and ichor.

Howard was panting with the effort of this duel and Jo was swaying a little and turning white around the lips... Howard muttered something and the bodies of young women and the dead tentacles all turned gray-green and every corpse melted into liquid and forced itself upwards until the whole massive weight of the megatons of corpses had built the hideous form of Dread Cthulhu, the God-Emperor of R’lyeh. In all the duels I’d watched, I’d never before seen anyone recycle their materials, let alone recycle _someone else’s_ materials, and the weight of this version of Cthulhu was so terrible that it cracked the material of the Plain of Agony with a thunderous report, more powerful than any naval gun I had ever heard. Jo gaped upwards in sheerest terror at the mile-high monstrosity, her face turning pale. Her lips shook and I was afraid that she would soon begin gibbering… The slimy, glistening horror that was Cthulhu turned the full weight of his brain-shattering gaze upon her, his eyes blazing with alien madness, battleship-length tentacles rippling and jerking like seaweed as he struggled against her sanity, and from all around Jo lesser tentacles rose up and attached themselves to her spine and face, beginning the longed-for task of sucking her very soul from its fleshy shell.

Jo dropped the glassed-in clock and I heard it shatter on the stones of her raped and raping statues, but she somehow kept ahold of the wand as she fell, and before her soul was ripped from her body, she gasped the words “Expecto Patronum.”

I was instantly inside out and spinning wildly, sucked by mysterious means into a maddening vortex of bizarre energies. I felt my very soul, somehow made solid, crack the transparent wall between the roadhouse and the Plain of Agony, and suddenly I was standing between Jo and the reality-raping madness conjured up by Howard. A blast of purest white light exploded from within me and Cthulhu dwindled away, howling, into the unclean depths.

Jo looked at me, her face pale, then she blushed and suddenly she burst into tears.

“She’s crying,” said Howard, “I believe that makes me the winner.”

Jo, face red and eyes bright with tears, got up and stalked across the plain towards her opponent. “If crying means someone has lost,” she said, backhanding him across the face with all her considerable strength, “I believe I won when I summoned a dementor in the shape of your wife.” She slapped him again, tears falling down her face, and he pushed her away and sneered, ignoring the trickle of blood from his mouth while he paged slowly through his book.

“Oh bother,” she sighed, pointing her wand at his book with shaking fingers and breathing the word “Confringo!” A blast of power burst from her wand and the Necronomicon – the only non-false Necronomicon in the entire multiverse - exploded in a blast of putrid smoke. Howard fell down and didn’t get back up. Jo looked at me in a panic, then likewise fell over unconscious, the tears still rolling down her face.

When the two of them were properly revived all of us sat together in a private room. “It’s just so embarrassing,” Jo complained, looking at me and tearing up yet again. “When I was young I read the Juveniles. I read Podkayne of Mars about the time I first learned about Freud and realized the utter brilliance that there was both an adult and a children’s interpretation of the book. I read “Time Enough For Love” and “I Will Fear No Evil” during my adolescence, and I finally read “Stranger” just about the time I started college. I showed it to friends and lets just say… we had a lot of fun with some of the ideas.” She blushed and fluttered her lashes quite prettily. “I completely understood “Job” and I wanted to be Friday… but in my world you can’t choose the form of your patronus - there’s a deep psychology involved and you don’t know what it is until you summon it. My patronus happens to be you - a dead American author who’s usually described with terms like “racist,” “genocidal” and “problematic” - if the person I’m talking to is willing to speak of him at all, and that’s without ever mentioning the “incest problem...” Jo looked down at her feet.

“I must admit,” I told her, “that I did propose a few uncomfortable thought experiments, and in retrospect Farnham’s Freehold seems ill-advised, but genocidal? That’s ridiculous!”

“I know,” Jo said, “and I am a fan, but I’d really prefer that my guilty pleasures be kept, you know… guil- I mean, they should be kept private.”

“So,” said Howard, clearly struggling with the idea of a woman with complex emotions who was capable of experiencing guilty pleasures, “you were not crying because of something I did, you were crying because your deep psychology summoned a – what did you call it? - a patronus which was personally embarrassing?” Howard’s eyes went merry and he covered his mouth. “In essence, you defeated yourself.”

“Not at all,” I said, putting a little menace into my voice, “in case you haven’t noticed, Jo’s patronus is still here.”

“And he’s still glowing,” Ginny observed. “I hope that wears off.”

“But in terms of your duelling records,” I explained, “I think you’d both rather have the loss than the win.”

“I don’t believe that’s the case,” said Howard.

“Oh really?” Jo’s British accent had grown very cold.

“If either of you wins,” I explained, “accusations of cheating will abound. Jo, you’re new here and our rules don’t yet come to you automatically, but it’s considered very bad form to attack someone’s weapon, which in Howard’s case is his book. On the other hand Howard, Jo’s critique of your standard for victory was very much to the point – you insisted that she lost because she was crying, but she’d already made you sob like a broken child. So in either case a victory will be thrown into your faces for years, possibly even centuries… accusations of cheating and poor sportsmanship will abound, and those arguments never seem to fade. But if you lose, everyone will accept that the matter is closed and life will go on without the ugly accusations.” I shrugged. “Except those of bigotry on one hand and a lack of generosity on the other. You might both want to consider those issues at some point. On the other hand, I was on the duelling ground, so perhaps I should claim the victory, as I was the only one still standing.”

“I beg your pardon,” Howard said, “but you came in at the very end of the fight after both of us were already exhausted.

“True, but I don’t really care about the win, and you know I don’t need it…” My record as a duellist is also unblemished, though I mainly duel for fun, or to establish who will pay for drinks. “My concern is to discourage people from summoning me to intervene in their disputes.”

“Hmmm…” Howard looked at me. “Bob. I think you’re fixing things up again.”

I stared at him, keeping my eyes hard and my face expressionless. “It’s what I do.”

“I don’t believe I like you very much right now.”

I reached into my vest pocket and showed him the butt of the 1911 I use when I duel. “Are you ready for a second fight tonight?”

Lovecraft reached into his vest pocket, rummaged around confusedly, and pulled out an empty hand. He closed his eyes and frowned, the air slowly escaping his lungs. “No Bob. I’m not.”

“Smart man. The best thing for all of us would be if everyone remembered the pyrotechnics and forgot the outcome, and we three are powerful enough together that if we all emphasize the hideous majesty of your Cthulhu, the glorious aerial charge of the griffons, the amazing battle between the young lady and Yog Sothoth, the moral horror of the Dementor and hideous power of the Colour, while de-emphasizing my role in the final skirmish… that’s what people will remember. The reward for me is that I won’t be gotten out of bed because Mary and Mike are fighting again. Can we all agree to this?”

Jo raised one eyebrow. “Under the circumstances, I think it’s the best we’re going to get. I agree.”

“Very well,” Howard’s shoulders sagged and he sighed, but despite his recent ugliness, I knew him as a man who would keep his promises, “pending discussion of the forfeits, of course.”

“I intend to keep the forfeits very light, because a heavy forfeit would result in more talk about what happened tonight. Howard, your forfeit will be to spend a couple weeks with a friend of mine. He’s a Harvard man, a poet, and a very learned fellow, whom I think you’ll like very much once you get to know him. Does this seem agreeable to you?”

“It does,” Howard agreed, so I reached out to my friend, made the necessary arrangements and sent Lovecraft off with a wave of my hand.

“Wait one minute,” said Jo, outraged. “You mean Howard comes in here with a head full of vitriol, spews racist and sexist garbage all over the bar, then gets to make a new friend? That’s his forfeit?”

I tried to kept my face hard but failed miserably and broke into a smile. “I forgot to mention a few things about the friend.”

Ginny started to laugh. She’d obviously gotten the joke, but then she does know me so very well. “Who was it?

“Harvard man, poet, writer, extremely learned, very much a socialist, but not White, frequently expressed the idea that capitalism is the cause of racism...”

“Of course,” laughed Samuel, delighted. “They’ll be perfect together… once Howard overcomes his apoplexy!”

“Oh!” gasped Jo, those beautiful, very mobile lips turning upward in a wonderful smile, “that does sound lovely!” Somehow Ginny had ended up sitting next to Samuel, and I noticed that she was running her fingers lightly up and down the inside of his forearm. Her eyes flicked to Jo and she gave me the tiniest of nods. I immediately changed my mind about how to handle Jo’s forfeit...

“As for you, young lady,” I said, laying gentle fingers across her hand, “in the matter of your forfeit, perhaps we could tarry in this room awhile and discuss your “Patronus issues.” Just talk, of course, to sort things out if you're so inclined.”

Jo looked me over carefully. Perhaps I should say, more precisely, that she _studied me carefully_ for very long time, her blue eyes steady. Then her face lit up. “That would be lovely,” she said.

_Fin_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Let's see...
> 
> "Bill" is William Shakespeare, of course.
> 
> "Samuel" is Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain.)
> 
> "Edgar" is obviously Edgar Allen Poe.
> 
> "My Protégé" is Ray Bradbury, who learned the writing business from Heinlein and other members of a Los Angeles area writer's group. You can still visit Clifton's Cafeteria in Los Angeles and sit at Ray Bradbury's favorite table.
> 
> "Baroness Blixen" is the real-life identity of Isak Dinesen, the author of "Out of Africa" and many other classics.
> 
> "Ike, Arthur and Ted" are Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Theodore Sturgeon.
> 
> "Ginny" is Robert Heinlein's 3rd wife. In my head-canon she thinks Samuel Clemons has a very handsome moustache.
> 
> "The Bouncer" is Harlan Ellison. In a world where authors duel using their creations and their hostile emotions as weapons, he would be a Godzilla-level opponent.
> 
> "Joyce and Burroughs" are James Joyce and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
> 
> “Harvard man, poet, writer, extremely learned, very much a socialist, but not White, frequently expressed the idea that capitalism is the cause of racism...” is W.E.B. Dubois. I also considered introducing Lovecraft to Zora Neale Hurston or Josephine Baker, who is one of my favorite historical figures.
> 
> The "young lady who fights Yog Sothoth" is Hermione Granger.
> 
> "Mary and Mike" are Mary Robinette Kowal and Michael Z. Williamson, authors who've engaged in some online squabbling. I don't know whether their animosity is serious enough in real life to spark a magical duel.
> 
> "Clark, Frank, Zelia, August, Robert, Ramsey, Brian, Elizabeth, Charles, Ruthanna and countless others" are just a few of the authors who have been paid for stories/books set in H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos: Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Bellenkamp Long, Zelia Bishop, August Derleth, Robert Block, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Elizabeth Bear, Charles Stross and Ruthanna Emrys, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Lovecraft's comments about how his "Open Sourcing" of the Mythos has allowed many authors to support themselves is entirely on point, though his accusations that "Jo" is selfish are not - she has contributed more than 100 million to various charities, and of course it is entirely proper for her to control her own intellectual property.
> 
> Unfortunately, H.P. Lovecraft's racism was very real, and so were his issues with women (though they were by far the lesser evil compared to his racism.) However, the real H.P. Lovecraft was more reserved than I portray him here, and I'm pretty sure he would not have run around in public, drunk, for several days, ranting all the while about how a Black woman had won the Hugo award. The kindest thing I can say about Lovecraft's racism is that his vices were a large as his virtues, and I'll leave it at that.


End file.
